The first ever GAO(Government Accountability Office) audit of the Federal Reserve was carried out in the past few months due to the Ron Paul, Alan Grayson Amendment to the Dodd-Frank bill, which passed last year. Jim DeMint, a Republican Senator, and Bernie Sanders, an independent Senator, led the charge for a Federal Reserve audit in the Senate, but watered down the original language of the house bill(HR1207), so that a complete audit would not be carried out. Ben Bernanke(pictured to the left), Alan Greenspan, and various other bankers vehemently opposed the audit and lied to Congress about the effects an audit would have on markets. Nevertheless, the results of the first audit in the Federal Reserve’s nearly 100 year history were posted on Senator Sander’s webpage earlier this morning: http://sanders.senate.gov/newsroom/news/?id=9e2a4ea8-6e73-4be2-a753-62060dcbb3c3

What was revealed in the audit was startling: $16,000,000,000,000.00 had been secretly given out to US banks and corporations and foreign banks everywhere from France to Scotland. From the period between December 2007 and June 2010, the Federal Reserve had secretly bailed out many of the world’s banks, corporations, and governments. The Federal Reserve likes to refer to these secret bailouts as an all-inclusive loan program, but virtually none of the money has been returned and it was loaned out at 0% interest. Why the Federal Reserve had never been public about this or even informed the United States Congress about the $16 trillion dollar bailout is obvious — the American public would have been outraged to find out that the Federal Reserve bailed out foreign banks while Americans were struggling to find jobs.

To place $16 trillion into perspective, remember that GDP of the United States is only $14.12 trillion. The entire national debt of the United States government spanning its 200+ year history is “only” $14.5 trillion. The budget that is being debated so heavily in Congress and the Senate is “only” $3.5 trillion. Take all of the outrage and debate over the $1.5 trillion deficit into consideration, and swallow this Red pill: There was no debate about whether $16,000,000,000,000 would be given to failing banks and failing corporations around the world.

In late 2008, the TARP Bailout bill was passed and loans of $800 billion were given to failing banks and companies. That was a blatant lie considering the fact that Goldman Sachs alone received 814 billion dollars. As is turns out, the Federal Reserve donated $2.5 trillion to Citigroup, while Morgan Stanley received $2.04 trillion. The Royal Bank of Scotland and Deutsche Bank, a German bank, split about a trillion and numerous other banks received hefty chunks of the $16 trillion.

“This is a clear case of socialism for the rich and rugged, you’re-on-your-own individualism for everyone else.” – Bernie Sanders(I-VT)

When you have conservative Republican stalwarts like Jim DeMint(R-SC) and Ron Paul(R-TX) as well as self identified Democratic socialists like Bernie Sanders all fighting against the Federal Reserve, you know that it is no longer an issue of Right versus Left. When you have every single member of the Republican Party in Congress and progressive Congressmen like Dennis Kucinich sponsoring a bill to audit the Federal Reserve, you realize that the Federal Reserve is an entity onto itself, which has no oversight and no accountability.

Americans should be swelled with anger and outrage at the abysmal state of affairs when an unelected group of bankers can create money out of thin air and give it out to megabanks and supercorporations like Halloween candy. If the Federal Reserve and the bankers who control it believe that they can continue to devalue the savings of Americans and continue to destroy the US economy, they will have to face the realization that their trillion dollar printing presses will eventually plunder the world economy.

The list of institutions that received the most money from the Federal Reserve can be found on page 131 of the GAO Audit and are as follows..

Success:Away from the low growth and high regulation of an America under Washington’s thumb, our northern neighbor is economically strong. As 2011 ends, Canada has announced yet another tax cut — and will soar even more.

The Obama administration and its economic czars have flailed about for years, baffled about how to get the U.S. economy growing.

In reality, the president need look no further than our neighbor, Canada, whose solid growth is the product of tax cuts, fiscal discipline, free trade, and energy development. That’s made Canada a roaring puma nation, while its supposedly more powerful southern neighbor stands on the outside looking in.

On Thursday, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced that he will slash corporate taxes again on Jan. 1 in the final stage of his Economic Action Plan, dropping the federal business tax burden to just 15%.

Along with fresh tax cuts in provinces such as Alberta, total taxes for businesses in Canada will drop to 25%, one of the lowest in the G7, and below the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development average.

“Creating jobs and growth is our top priority,” said Minister Jim Flaherty. “Through our government low-tax plan … we are continuing to send the message that Canada is open for business and the best place to invest.”

It’s not just that Canada’s conservative government favors makers over takers. Harper’s also wildly popular for shrinking government. “The Harper government has pursued a strategic objective to disembed the federal state from the lives of citizens,” wrote University of Calgary Professor Barry Cooper, in the Calgary Herald.

Harper also has made signing free trade treaties his priority. Canada now has 11 free trade pacts in force, and 14 under active negotiation — including pacts with the European Union and India, among others.

Lastly, Canada has pursued its competitive advantage — oil. And it did so not through top-down “industrial policy,” but by getting government out of the way.

Harper has enacted market-friendly regulations to accomplish big things like the Keystone Pipeline — and urged President Obama to move forward on it or else Canada would sell its oil to China.

These policies have been well-known since the Reagan era. But in a country that’s been institutionally socialist since the 1950s, Harper’s moves represent a dramatic affirmation for free market economics.

For Canada, they’ve had big benefits.

Canada’s incomes are rising, its unemployment is two percentage points below the U.S. rate, its currency is strengthening and it boasts Triple-A or equivalent sovereign ratings across the board from the five top international ratings agencies, lowering its cost of credit.

Is it too much to ask Washington to start paying attention to the Canadian success story?

These sound principles work every time they are tried, and they have led to a transformation in Canada.

Conservatives have been right over and over again. But it doesn’t matter when there is a party of genuine evil running things and when there is a media propaganda machine that fanatically supports that party of genuine evil.

The God damn America that Obama “fundamentally transformed” the United States into is a suicide machine.

Obama fell in love with government health care; you’ll learn to hate it more than you’ve ever hated anything in your life:

Scandal of NHS ‘production line’The number of NHS patients who have to undergo emergency readmission to hospital within a month of being discharged has increased by more than three quarters in the last decade, the Daily Telegraph can disclose.
By Robert Winnett, Political Editor
9:54PM GMT 29 Dec 2011

Hospitals have been accused by ministers of treating patients “like parts on a production line” after official figures suggested that hundreds of thousands of people every year are being sent home before they are well enough.

More than 660,000 people were brought back to hospital last year within 28 days of leaving, statistics show, sparking allegations that patients are being “hurried through the system” so the NHS can meet waiting-list targets.

The official figures show that some NHS trusts have seen their emergency readmission rate rise more than three-fold over the past decade – while some hospitals have seen only a modest increase.

Last night, Andrew Lansley, the Health Secretary, said that the “hugely distressing” trend must stop.

“Patients have a right to expect that when they go in for treatment that they are looked after properly and that the treatment they are given helps them to recover,” he said.

“Having to be readmitted and treated all over again is hugely distressing. These figures show how Labour’s obsession with waiting time targets meant that patients were treated like parts on a production line to be hurried through the system rather than like people who need to be properly cared for.”

The Department of Health has released detailed information on the number of emergency readmissions in every area across Britain.

The figures show that 620,054 patients had to be readmitted in 2009-10 – compared to just 348,996 a decade before, a 78 percent increase. Over the past five years, there has been a 31 percent rise and a five percent increase on the previous 12 months.

The data also highlights the widespread regional variations. The rate of readmission in the Kensington & Chelsea PCT area has risen by 287 percent over the past decade to 1,582 people.

However, North Lincolnshire PCT has only experienced a 3.37 percent rise over the same period.

Hospitals within the Hampshire PCT area readmitted 13,239 people last year. The nearby area covered by the Isle of Wight PCT only had to readmit 1,098 people.

The figures, do not include patients suffering from cancer or mental health problems or maternity patients.

Most of the areas with the highest increases in readmission numbers are in London and the south east, where pressure is greatest on the NHS. The Department of Health has analysed the social make-up of each area and concludes that the so-called “thriving London periphery” – the relatively wealthy commuter hinterland around the capital has suffered the biggest recent deterioration.

Some of the rise in readmissions may be due to the increase in population in these areas or changes in the way that the data is collected.

About 10 million people are admitted to hospital wards each year. Critics claim that government targets, such as the demand that patients be admitted to hospital for treatment within 18 weeks of seeing their GP, mean hospital managers are pressured into releasing patients early to make beds available.

Earlier this month, The Daily Telegraph disclosed that the Government is moving from a system of targets for hospitals based on waiting and treatment times – to a system of so-called “outcomes” which measures the success of treatment.

In a criticism of previous targets which he blames for the increase in emergency readmissions, Mr Lansley said: “Instead of focusing on the results which actually matter for patients, they focused on narrow processes to the detriment of patient care. That is why we have taken action to address these increases in emergency readmissions.

“One of the new goals we are setting the NHS is reducing emergency readmissions. In order to help achieve this we have created a re-ablement fund of £300 million and we have taken action to stop hospitals being paid when they readmit a patient after discharging them too early. These steps will turn Labour’s poor performance around.”

Under the Government scheme, hospitals will effectively be responsible for people’s care in the weeks after they return home and will be financially penalised for discharging patients too soon.

Ministers have also increased funding for so-called “tele-health” where people can “manage” their long-term conditions independently at home but are remotely monitored by doctors.

The official figures have been released as NHS managers claimed that one in four people being treated in hospital should be at home – which could lead to even more re-admissions if the programme is not properly monitored.

Mike Farrar, the head of the NHS Federation, said: “Hospitals play a vital role, but we do rely on them for some services that could be provided elsewhere. We should be concentrating on reducing hospital stays where this is right for patients, shifting resources into community services, raising standards of general practice, and promoting early intervention and self care.”

However, concerns are growing that GPs will be unable to cope with the demands of more people being treated at home. Earlier this week, it emerged that some GP practices now had up to 9,000 people registered.

Yesterday, Jacqui Davis, head of the NHS Consultants’ Association, said: “Why would you want to have people isolated in their homes? This is not going to save money and it is unfortunately the wrong message.

“GP’s are swamped, social services are having their budgets cut. While it may be more appropriate for more people to be treated within the community we simply can’t do it without making much better arrangements than we’ve got at the moment.”

Here’s another example of what will surely be “coming soon” unless ObamaCare gets repealed:

Health service trusts are “imposing pain and inconvenience” by making patients wait longer than necessary, in some cases as long as four months, the study found.

Executives believe the delays mean some people will remove themselves from lists “either by dying or by paying for their own treatment” claims the report, by an independent watchdog that advises the NHS.

The Co-operation and Competition Panel says the tactic is one of a number used by managers that “excessively constrain” patients’ rights to choose where to be operated upon, and damage hospitals’ ability to compete for planned surgery.

It claims unfair practices are “endemic” in some areas of England and pose a “serious risk” to the Government’s drive to open up the health service to competition.

But managers, who are already rationing surgery for cataracts, hips, knees and tonsils, say they must restrict treatment as the NHS is under orders to make £20 billion of efficiency savings by 2015.

Lord Carter of Coles, chairman of the panel, said: “Commissioners have a difficult job in the current financial climate, but patients’ rights are often being restricted without a valid and visible reason.”

Katherine Murphy, chief executive of the Patients Association, said: “It is outrageous that some primary care trusts are imposing minimum waiting times. The suggestion that it could save money because patients will remove themselves from the list by going private or dying is a callous and cynical manipulation of people’s lives and should not be tolerated.”

Since 2006, NHS patients who need routine elective care have had the right to choose between at least four hospitals including privately-run units. But there have been claims that trusts, the local bodies that pay for treatment, restrict choice and favour some hospitals to balance their books. The panel investigated whether the allegations were true.

Managers restricted GPs’ ability to refer patients to some hospitals by imposing “caps” on the number a provider would be paid to treat and by imposing minimum waiting times, its report said.

Under government targets, patients should be treated within 18 weeks of referral by a GP. But even when surgeons could see them far sooner, the study found that some trusts made hospitals wait as long as 15 weeks before operating. The tactic forced private hospitals, which were more likely to be able to treat patients quickly, to operate as slowly as overcrowded NHS units in an “unfortunate levelling down”.

Some managers insisted that longer waiting times would lead to overall savings as “experience suggests that if patients wait longer then some will remove themselves from the list”. Interpreting this statement, the panel noted: “We understand that patients will ‘remove themselves from the waiting list’ either by dying or by paying for their own treatment at private sector providers.”

It said that minimum waiting times should only be used as a “last resort” and told trusts to publish their policies on the home page of their websites.

The panel also found that trusts tended to give elective business to their local NHS hospital, rather than allowing choice, in order to ensure its other services such as casualty departments remained financially viable.

The findings come as the NHS is under pressure from increasing demand and tighter budgets. Waiting times have lengthened since last year’s general election and more trusts are increasing the number of procedures of “low clinical value” they turn down or insisting that patients’ conditions worsen before they are seen.

Labour yesterday unearthed Treasury figures that show health spending totalled £101.985 billion in 2010-11, down from £102.751 billion in the last year of Labour, despite David Cameron’s pledge that “the money going into the NHS will actually increase in real terms”. The Tories pointed out that the fall represented the last part of the previous government’s five-year spending plan.

“Trusts will want to take a hard look at practices in light of this report and ensure they are always in the best interest of patients and the taxpayer.”

Under the Health and Social Care Bill, which has been watered down in the face of opposition from the medical profession and Liberal Democrats, power to buy treatment will be handed from trusts to new bodies led by GPs.

The new Clinical Commissioning Groups are intended to be more accountable to patients, while the number of sectors where choice and competition apply is being extended. David Stout, director of the NHS Confederation’s primary care trust network, said: “Today’s report rightly acknowledges that each situation will be different and the extent that any benefits outweigh the loss of choice should be considered on a case-by-case basis.”

He added: “Commissioners will still be left to decide the right course of action when faced with trade-offs between patient choice and value for money. The suggestion that many current trust decisions are not justifiable on these grounds is largely unsubstantiated by the detail in the report as the CCP has not investigated specific cases in detail.”

A wise woman once looked at what she saw coming under ObamaCare, looked at the hell that such socialized medicine was based on, and saw “death panels.”

There are actually about 160 death panels created by ObamaCare:

When you see NHS (or “National Health Service), just think “ObamaCare for England.” And then think about the hell that you voted for your parents to experience in voting for Obama.

The beast is coming – that is, if you’re still healthy enough after ObamaCare gets its fangs into you that you’re still alive to suffer under his tyranny.

“The problem is, is that the way Bush has done it over the last eight years is to take out a credit card from the Bank of China in the name of our children, driving up our national debt from $5 trillion for the first 42 presidents – #43 added $4 trillion by his lonesome, so that we now have over $9 trillion of debt that we are going to have to pay back — $30,000 for every man, woman and child. That’s irresponsible. It’s unpatriotic.”

And:

“The fact that we are here today to debate raising America’s debt limit is a sign of leadership failure. It is a sign that the U.S. Government can’t pay its own bills. It is a sign that we now depend on ongoing financial assistance from foreign countries to finance our Government’s reckless fiscal policies. … Increasing America’s debt weakens us domestically and internationally. Leadership means that ‘the buck stops here. Instead, Washington is shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren. America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership. Americans deserve better.”

Why doesn’t Obama resign? Because in his own words “Americans deserve better” than him.

$30,000 for every man, woman and child? Boy, that would seem really bad. Unless the worst president in the history of the human race didn’t come along and make it over $50,000 for every man, woman and child.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The White House plans to ask Congress by the end of the week for an increase in the government’s debt ceiling to allow the United States to pay its bills on time, according to a senior Treasury Department official on Tuesday.

[…]

The debt limit currently stands at $15.194 trillion and would increase to $16.394 trillion with the request.

Hmm. $9 trillion…. $16 trillion. Which one is a more irresponsible, unpatriotic failure of leadership??? Gosh, I vote Democrat so I’m just too…. insane … and stupid… to know…

Feeling…. weak… Must… blame… Bush…

And there: now we Democrats – having healed ourselves – feel much better now. Because that “blame Bush” pill cures everything. Except reality. But why should we care about that?

If there was so much as a shred of honesty or decency in Barack Obama, in the Democrat Party, or in anyone who votes for the Democrat Party, they would do the only honorable thing and just go away and leave decent Americans alone.

I hear North Korea is real nice. And it’s a “People’s republic,” too. With a brand spanking new dear leader messiah. You libs will like it just fine.

Someone commenting on the latest debt ceiling hike (which now makes Obama responsible for the THREE highest debt celing hikes in the history of the entire human race) asked a question. And then he answered it:

“Where does this end? When does this stop? I guess when there is no more money to take from us and then the riots start.”

But don’t forget the media condemned the Tea Party. Because buying permits, peacefully demonstrating and then cleaning up your own trash afterward is simply not the American way according to Democrats. Because they abhor personal responsibility; holding people accountable for their despicable conduct just isn’t compatible with their vision of “social justice” in which only people they don’t like should be held accountable if for nothing other than their hard work and resultant success.

A sex fiend barged into a woman’s tent and sexually assaulted her at around 6 a.m., said protesters, who chased him from the park.

“Pervert! Pervert! Get the f–k out!” said vigilante Occupiers, who never bothered to call the cops.

“They were shining flashlights in his face and yelling at him to leave,” said a woman who called herself Leslie, but refused to give her real name.

She said that weeks earlier another woman was raped.

“We don’t tell anyone,” she said. “We handle it internally. I said too much already.”

I mean, seriously, what more do you want?

Vote Democrat! Vote for typhus, tuberculosis and the spread of disease! Rats and lice have a right to “occupy” too!

And vote Democrat! Vote for rape! I mean, come on guys, YOU KNOW YOU WANT TO!!! And the Occupiers have a way to let you do it and not even bother with the cops!!!

You’re a racist if you disapprove. In fact, your disapproving is all the proof we need to know that you make more than a million dollars a year. Because you’re a one-percenter, and we don’t have to listen to one-percenters.

The cost of “Occupy” on our society is incalculable. Because the same mainstream media that endlessly demonized the Tea Party blessed the vileness of Occupy.

But also because it just flat-out cost cities that are already struggling to deal with the horror of the Obama economy untold millions of dollars:

It’s unclear what the Occupy protests have accomplished, but police have received a bonanza of overtime, making up a large part of at least $10.3 million in costs incurred by nine cities since the protesters began gathering near Wall Street two months ago.

Occupy Wall Street catalyzed dozens, if not hundreds, of protests across the world. New York City alone has spent about $6 million on costs related to Occupy Wall Street, not including the eviction on Tuesday, according to Howard Wolfson, the mayor’s deputy for government relations.

Philadelphia racked up $492,000 in unanticipated police overtime through last week, according to Rebecca Rhynhart, budget director. Rhynhart said the city is estimating that costs could reach $2.5 million if the protest lasts through the fiscal year, or June 30.

“It’s an unanticipated expense but we’re managing it,” Rhynhart said. The city has a budget of $3.5 billion. “In order to pay for it, there’s less money for other things. ” [I must here interject that if the Tea Party costs Philadelphia fifty bucks the same budget director would have been decrying the evil fascist robbery of the poor people].

Oakland spent over $1 million to pay police overtime, according to the Washington Post.

Portland estimated $750,000 so far for police overtime and damage related to its parks has cost $50,000 to $100,000, according to Amy Ruiz, communications director for Mayor Sam Adams.

In Seattle, protests will cost $625,999 from the week that ended in Oct. 14 to the end of Nov. 25. The largest chunk goes to overtime for Seattle police: $580,468.

The extra costs to Seattle’s parks comprise $21,471 of the total and the department of finance and administrative services, which just gave protesters permission for a permit to use part of city hall’s plaza on Tuesday, made up the rest at $24,060.

The Boston police department estimated overtime costs in regards to the Occupy Boston movement to be about $575,000 so far, according to Elaine Driscoll director of communications of the department.

In Atlanta, protests cost $451,691 from Oct. 7 to 25, with almost three-quarters going to overtime to police, said Mayor Kasim Reed on Nov. 2.

Occupy Atlanta released a statement that week in response.

“Today we were all dismayed by Mayor Kasim Reed’s claim that our nonviolent demonstration against corporate greed and economic inequities cost the city over $400,000. This is, of course, a factual error,” according to the statement in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

The group said the mayor “spent the people’s money on an extreme excessive police presence that rivals any big-budget Hollywood production to manage several hundred peaceful demonstrators that wanted nothing more than public space to assemble and air grievances.”

Occupy Denver led to overtime for various city departments during five days of protest in October at about $365,000, said the safety manager’s office, according to the Denver Post.

The protests are estimated to cost $200,000 a week for the rest of the year. This week, the police department asked for an increase of $6 million in its budget, “citing Occupy as a small but unspecified portion of the cost,” the Post reported.

Cincinnati has spent about $128,000 in police overtime, according to the Cincinnati Enquirer last week.

Those are old figures, and the mainstream media is hushing up about the total costs of a movement in which protestors were arrested by the thousands (against that “violent” Tea Party in which basically nobody was arrested). And the only violence we saw was when a liberal animal bit off the finger of a man he believed to be guilty of the charge of having attended a Tea Party event (the man hadn’t, but it was “social justice” to bite his finger off anyway).

Here’s a more recent figure of what Occupy costs Los Angeles all by itself:

Occupy L.A.’s two-month encampment outside Los Angeles City Hall cost taxpayers at least $2.3 million, most of which will have to be added to the growing deficit in the city’s current year budget, according to a report issued Friday.

The Los Angeles Police Department, which raided the camp Nov. 30 and arrested nearly 300 people, spent $1.2 million on time-and-a-half overtime pay as a result of the extended protest, said City Administrative Officer Miguel Santana, who wrote the report. Meanwhile, the General Services Department’s police force, which patrols city parks and buildings, racked up $335,000 in overtime during the encampment.

[…]

Carlos Marroquin, an Occupy L.A. representative, called the report’s figures “outrageous” and said the city should have been setting aside money for protests and other special events all along. Marroquin said such an intense police response was unnecessary and accused city leaders of trying to scapegoat the protesters.

You know, the same way the same people who are part of the deranged lice-ridden Occupy Movement screamers scapegoated the Tea Party protestors who did no wrong and no harm to anyone.

Computer hackers are avenging the Occupy movement by exposing the personal information of police officers who evicted protesters and threatening family-values advocates who led a boycott of an American Muslim television show.

In three Internet postings last week, hackers from the loose online coalition called Anonymous published the email and physical addresses, phone numbers and, in some cases, salary details of thousands of law enforcement officers all over the country.

The hackers said they were retaliating for police violence during evictions of Occupy protest camps in cities around the country, but law enforcement advocates slammed the disclosures as dangerous.

“I hope the individuals behind these cyberattacks understand the consequences of what they are doing,” said John Adler, president of the Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association. “There are very dangerous criminals out there who might seek retribution” against any of these police officers.

It truly is amazing. Barack Obama does so much damage to the U.S. economy that people live in camps to protest. And, being liberal morons, they protest against everybody and everything BUT the Democrats who are running the country and the liberal policies that are ruining the country.

I can only say this: given that the American people were stupid enough to elect Barack Obama as their president, it would truly seem that liberals have been right all along: the American people ARE too stupid to be treated like anything other than stupid, helpless sheep, and we need to be led around by the government like the pathetic beasts that we truly are, and the party that assumes the lowest possible common denominator about the intelligence and virtue of the American people is most likely the party that will win:

Editor’s note: Amitai Etzioni is a sociologist and professor of international relations at George Washington University and the author of several books, including “The Limits of Privacy.” He was a senior adviser to the Carter administration and has taught at Columbia and Harvard universities and the University of California, Berkeley.

(CNN) — A proposal by Rep. Paul Ryan and Sen. Ron Wyden to allow those who retire in the future to chose [sic] between Medicare and private health care insurance for seniors is the latest addition to the drive to increase competition in health care.

Mitt Romney recently released a health care proposal that would introduce vouchers, which would allow consumers to choose where to take their business, although he did not include Medicare as an option. Newt Gingrich’s plan suggests a variety of ways to increase “price competition in the industry.”

And President Obama’s health care overhaul also includes competition, to take place in new statewide exchanges, in which individuals and businesses will be able to find and compare insurance plans in a centralized marketplace.

But research shows that competition in health care cannot be made to work effectively. As patients, we are just not equipped to absorb and process the information needed to make healthy choices on our own.

To highlight the issue at hand, it is best to start with the circumstances in which competition does work. It requires that the consumers purchase items that are relatively small in cost and consequences (a can of beans, a tube of toothpaste, a pizza), that they repeat the purchase often, and that the consumers are able to readily receive and absorb relevant information.

When these conditions are met, consumers can find out which products meet their needs by trying one, then trying some others, then casting away (or not purchasing again) those that fail — without undue costs or harm. And consumers must be able to obtain the information about what the products contain, which they cannot figure out by simply tasting them or trying them on (hence the standardized nutrition labels that describe what foods contain, such as the number of calories and amount of sodium).

[…]

Baaaaah I mean bullcrap. Unless you vote Democrat, and then the hypothesis that the American people are way, waaaaaaaay too stupid to possibly be able to think for themselves fits better than Michael Jackson’s (or O.J. Simpson’s) glove.

Jimmy Carter is back, reincarnated as Barack Obama. And I hate the Carter regime even more this time than I did last time.

“The fact that we are here today to debate raising America’s debt limit is a sign of leadership failure. It is a sign that the U.S. Government can’t pay its own bills. It is a sign that we now depend on ongoing financial assistance from foreign countries to finance our Government’s reckless fiscal policies. … Increasing America’s debt weakens us domestically and internationally. Leadership means that ‘the buck stops here. Instead, Washington is shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren. America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership. Americans deserve better.”

Obama then:

“The problem is, is that the way Bush has done it over the last eight years is to take out a credit card from the Bank of China in the name of our children, driving up our national debt from $5 trillion for the first 42 presidents – #43 added $4 trillion by his lonesome, so that we now have over $9 trillion of debt that we are going to have to pay back — $30,000 for every man, woman and child. That’s irresponsible. It’s unpatriotic.”

And then there’s the Obama of now. There’s the president who demonized his predecessor in a vicious and hateful way who has since demanded the three highest debt ceiling increases in the history of the entire human race.

Obama is demanding yet another debt ceiling hike – this one to the tune of $1.2 trillion. Because he is determined to spend until our children’s children’s children’s children’s children’s children’s children’s children are still paying off his debts. Because that is liberalism in a nutshell: destroy America and destroy any chance of a future America ever coming back.

Democrats seem to think that if America even has so much as a thousand-to-one longshot chance of having a future, they haven’t done their job.

It’s as if in the Democrat Party the Soviet Union stabbed us in the heart from the grave. The Communist Party USA sings Obama’s praises as “one of us!” while the former U.S.S.R. mouthpiece Pravda openly mocks Obama’s America as having a fervent desire to commit national suicide.

I don’t write this with the intent of attacking the recently deceased, but rather to underscore a point that occurred to me as I scanned through an LA Times op-ed by liberal Meghan Daum. Her piece began:

As fans of the late Christopher Hitchens cycle through the five stages of grief, it’s interesting to see which of his opinions can still inspire the kind of anger that is unlikely to ever fade into acceptance. There are, of course, the obvious candidates: his characterization of Bill Clinton as “a rapist” or his vilification of Mother Teresa as “a fanatic, a fundamentalist, and a fraud.” There is also his oh so chivalrous shout-out to the Dixie Chicks, whom he called “fat slugs” (or “slags” or “sluts” depending on your source) despite later admitting “having not the least idea of what any of them looked like.”

I actually hadn’t realized that Christopher Hitchens was such an equal-opportunity hater. I mean, I thought he just hated religious or Christian people like me.

This is what the Republican Party has done to us this year: It has placed within reach of the Oval Office a woman who is a religious fanatic and a proud, boastful ignoramus. Those who despise science and learning are not anti-elitist. They are morally and intellectually slothful people who are secretly envious of the educated and the cultured. And those who prate of spiritual warfare and demons are not just “people of faith” but theocratic bullies. On Nov. 4, anyone who cares for the Constitution has a clear duty to repudiate this wickedness and stupidity.

And I was thinking, “So it wasn’t just Christians and religion in general he dumped hate on.

And a frankly irrational anger and a determination to impose an agenda by force rather than by consent were the scope of both pieces.

In the immediately above piece, Hitchens is quoted:

“How can we ever know how many children had their psychological and physical lives irreparably maimed by the compulsory inculcation of faith? Religion … has always hoped to practice upon the unformed and undefended minds of the young… If religious instruction were not allowed until the child had attained the age of reason, we would be living in a quite different world.”

Ah, if we could just forcibly remove the children of those Christians and those religious nutjobs and allow the state to indoctrinate them instead, you know, like the Soviet Union or North Korea, imagine what a “different world” we could have.

It occurred to me to wonder how many hateful and vicious quotes came from the mouth or pen of Christopher Hitchens’ most obvious counterpart, Billy Graham?

I found Billy Graham saying the following despicable thing about Bill Clinton:

Oops, I’m sorry. Billy didn’t actually say anything hateful about Bill Clinton. I’m sure it was only because they were both “Bills” rather than that Billy Graham isn’t hateful, though.

Oops, Billy Graham didn’t say anything hateful about ANY Democrat candidate for president, let descriptions such as “fanatic,” “boastful,” “ignoramus,” as “those who despise science and learning,” as “morally and intellectually slothful people,” “who are secretly envious of the educated and the cultured,” as “theocratic bullies,” and as “wickedness and stupidity.”

I mean, the sheer tolerance of Christopher Hitchens as compared to Billy Graham is really something.

I mean, maybe I’ve been wrong about which side is so really intolerant.

I did find an article from an atheist entitled, “Dear Billy Graham: You’re A Hateful Bigot,” but if you click on that hoping for ammo against Rev. Billy, you won’t get very much. Billy’s most hateful quote, the pièce de résistance, was:

Only God can give us the moral and spiritual foundation we need for our lives. This is why the most important step you can take is to turn to Jesus Christ and commit your life to him. When you do, God will forgive your sins and make you his child forever. He also promises to be with you in the future. By a simple prayer of faith ask him to come into your life today.

“God’s not unjust, he doesn’t actually exist. We’ve been deceived. If God existed, he’d have made the world more just… I’ll lend you a book and you’ll see.”

Mao Tse Tung was an atheist who was rather famous for his care for the poor and the little people:

“Our God is none other than the masses of the Chinese people. If they stand up and dig together with us, why can’t these two mountains be cleared away?” [Mao Tse Tung, Little Red Book, “Self-Reliance and Arduous Struggle chapter 21”].

You gotta love the comparison between these great leaders of their respective movements. I mean, Jesus said ugly things like:

“But I tell you, Do not resist an evil person. If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also” — Matthew 5:39

“But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous” — Mathew 5:44-45

“Put your sword back in its place,” Jesus said to him, “for all who draw the sword will die by the sword” — Matthew 26:52

Just naked hate from that Jesus Bigot, I know. I can only apologize for having repeated His dark and evil teachings.

“The atom bomb is nothing to be afraid of,” Mao told Nehru, “China has many people. . . . The deaths of ten or twenty million people is nothing to be afraid of.” A witness said Nehru showed shock. Later, speaking in Moscow, Mao displayed yet more generosity: he boasted that he was willing to lose 300 million people, half of China’s population.” [Annie Dillard, “The Wreck of Time” in Harper’s from January 1998].

The real views of many in Obama administration were laid bare by a State Department official involved in planning the Brown visit, who reacted with fury when questioned by The Sunday Telegraph about why the event was so low-key.

The official dismissed any notion of the special relationship, saying: “There’s nothing special about Britain. You’re just the same as the other 190 countries in the world. You shouldn’t expect special treatment.”

Britain – the faithful ally and friend that alongside America prevailed over evil in two world wars – gets tossed into the same boat that Obama tosses America into.

If I’ve heard it once, I’ve heard it a hundred times: President Obama is destroying the country. Some say this destructiveness is intended; most say it is inadvertent, an outgrowth of inexperience, ideological wrong-headedness and an oddly undefined character. Indeed, on the matter of Mr. Obama’s character, today’s left now sounds like the right of three years ago. They have begun to see through the man and are surprised at how little is there.

Yet there is something more than inexperience or lack of character that defines this presidency: Mr. Obama came of age in a bubble of post-’60s liberalism that conditioned him to be an adversary of American exceptionalism. In this liberalism America’s exceptional status in the world follows from a bargain with the devil—an indulgence in militarism, racism, sexism, corporate greed, and environmental disregard as the means to a broad economic, military, and even cultural supremacy in the world. And therefore America’s greatness is as much the fruit of evil as of a devotion to freedom.

Mr. Obama did not explicitly run on an anti-exceptionalism platform. Yet once he was elected it became clear that his idea of how and where to apply presidential power was shaped precisely by this brand of liberalism. There was his devotion to big government, his passion for redistribution, and his scolding and scapegoating of Wall Street—as if his mandate was somehow to overcome, or at least subdue, American capitalism itself.

Anti-exceptionalism has clearly shaped his “leading from behind” profile abroad—an offer of self-effacement to offset the presumed American evil of swaggering cowboyism. Once in office his “hope and change” campaign slogan came to look like the “hope” of overcoming American exceptionalism and “change” away from it.

So, in Mr. Obama, America gained a president with ambivalence, if not some antipathy, toward the singular greatness of the nation he had been elected to lead.

Chad Crowe

But then again, the American people did elect him. Clearly Americans were looking for a new kind of exceptionalism in him (a black president would show America to have achieved near perfect social mobility). But were they also looking for—in Mr. Obama—an assault on America’s bedrock exceptionalism of military, economic and cultural pre-eminence?

American exceptionalism is, among other things, the result of a difficult rigor: the use of individual initiative as the engine of development within a society that strives to ensure individual freedom through the rule of law. Over time a society like this will become great. This is how—despite all our flagrant shortcomings and self-betrayals—America evolved into an exceptional nation.

Yet today America is fighting in a number of Muslim countries, and that number is as likely to rise as to fall. Our exceptionalism saddles us with overwhelming burdens. The entire world comes to our door when there is real trouble, and every day we spill blood and treasure in foreign lands—even as anti-Americanism plays around the world like a hit record.

At home the values that made us exceptional have been smeared with derision. Individual initiative and individual responsibility—the very engines of our exceptionalism—now carry a stigma of hypocrisy. For centuries America made sure that no amount of initiative would lift minorities and women. So in liberal quarters today—where historical shames are made to define the present—these values are seen as little more than the cynical remnants of a bygone era. Talk of “merit” or “a competition of excellence” in the admissions office of any Ivy League university today, and then stand by for the howls of incredulous laughter.

Our national exceptionalism both burdens and defames us, yet it remains our fate. We make others anxious, envious, resentful, admiring and sometimes hate-driven. There’s a reason al Qaeda operatives targeted the U.S. on 9/11 and not, say, Buenos Aires. They wanted to enrich their act of evil with the gravitas of American exceptionalism. They wanted to steal our thunder.

So we Americans cannot help but feel some ambivalence toward our singularity in the world—with its draining entanglements abroad, the selfless demands it makes on both our military and our taxpayers, and all the false charges of imperial hubris it incurs. Therefore it is not surprising that America developed a liberalism—a political left—that took issue with our exceptionalism. It is a left that has no more fervent mission than to recast our greatness as the product of racism, imperialism and unbridled capitalism.

But this leaves the left mired in an absurdity: It seeks to trade the burdens of greatness for the relief of mediocrity. When greatness fades, when a nation contracts to a middling place in the world, then the world in fact no longer knocks on its door. (Think of England or France after empire.) To civilize America, to redeem the nation from its supposed avarice and hubris, the American left effectively makes a virtue of decline—as if we can redeem America only by making her indistinguishable from lesser nations.

Since the ’60s we have enfeebled our public education system even as our wealth has expanded. Moral and cultural relativism now obscure individual responsibility. We are uninspired in the wars we fight, calculating our withdrawal even before we begin—and then we fight with a self-conscious, almost bureaucratic minimalism that makes the wars interminable.

America seems to be facing a pivotal moment: Do we move ahead by advancing or by receding—by reaffirming the values that made us exceptional or by letting go of those values, so that a creeping mediocrity begins to spare us the burdens of greatness?

As a president, Barack Obama has been a force for mediocrity. He has banked more on the hopeless interventions of government than on the exceptionalism of the people. His greatest weakness as a president is a limp confidence in his countrymen. He is afraid to ask difficult things of them.

Like me, he is black, and it was the government that in part saved us from the ignorances of the people. So the concept of the exceptionalism—the genius for freedom—of the American people may still be a stretch for him. But in fact he was elected to make that stretch. It should be held against him that he has failed to do so.

Mr. Steele is a senior fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution. Among his books is “White Guilt” (Harper/Collins, 2007).

Do you know the single identifying attribute of a country that is damned by God? It is that a nation get the leaders it truly deserves so that when it sows the wind it can ultimately reap the whirlwind (Hosea 8:7).

If you combine a truly critical time and a truly failed but truly narcissistic leader, you get true disaster.

The hope, of course, was a great Republican contender of courage and boldness and vision, who would take America away from the curse of Obama the way that Ronald Wilson Reagan took America away from the curse of Carter.

But the list of Republican candidates never inspired even Republicans, let alone anyone else.

And now, it seems to me, the fact that only Mitt Romney’s and Ron Paul’s campaigns had the capability to register a measly 10,000 votes to qualify for the Virginia primary makes it rather plain that we’re doomed to Romney – and that doom if we’re lucky. I mean, nobody else managing to even get to first base in a state is just too pathetic to ignore.

Newt Gingrich’s failure to qualify for the Virginia ballot is particularly abysmal; I mean, the guy LIVES in Virginia! How do you run for president and not even get on the ballot in your own damn state?

We needed courage and boldness and vision: and (again, IF WE’RE LUCKY!!!) we’ll end up with a plodding bureaucrat who has proven he will believe whatever he thinks he needs to believe at any moment.

Mind you, America would be far better off under Mitt Romney than it would under Barack Obama; and in fact I truly believe that America literally could not survive another Obama term. I mean, at least Romney learned his lesson that socialized medicine doesn’t work after destroying a state’s health care system; Obama couldn’t even learn that lesson after destroying an entire country’s health care system. Obama at his best is levels of magnitude worse than Romney at his worst.

Talk about America being a post-Christian nation, this will be the first presidential election in the United States in which neither candidate was a Christian. Mitt Romney as a Mormon believes that God evolved from something far less, that one day Mormon men will become “Gods” themselves and that Jesus Christ was a created being as opposed to being the Second Person of the Trinity become Incarnate. As a liberation theology believer, Barack Obama believes in collective (not individual by faith) Marxist-style “salvation and believes essentially that government IS God.

And, of course, this will be an election between a Mormon who believes that he will one day be God (Mitt Romney) versus a man who already believes he is God (Barack Obama).

It will be an election between a Mormon who believes that Jesus Christ is the spirit brother of Lucifer and a man who actually IS the spirit brother of Lucifer.

It’s just beyond sad.

Last time Obama ran as the “transformational candidate of hope and change”; this time he’ll run as the establishment monster who racked up a billion dollar warchest full of hateful attack ads because his completely failed record precludes anything else. But Obama is the same shameless liar in 2012 that we was in 2008; he is merely shifting the theme of his lies.

I will vote for Romney in 2012 if in fact he is the GOP candidate. At least Romney doesn’t believe he’s God yet, if nothing else. But I believe Mitt Romney will only slow down a descent into hell whereas Obama wants to apply rocket engines for our trip into the abyss.

It’s realizations like this one that make me more and more sure of one important fact: